A little background information

What is Landsat?

Every day, the Landsat 8 satellite captures nearly 550 scenes of the
Earth, each of which measures roughly 180 square kilometers. At worst,
it’s an impressive selfie. At best, it’s a tool for learning about the
dynamic processes and characteristics of our planet. If you're just
getting started with working with Landsat data or would like to learn
more, check out
our guide.

Paths and Rows

As you pan around, you'll notice that scenes are grouped into sets of dates.
Each set is defined by a unique path and row, which represents a
specific region regularly captured by Landsat. There's a significant amount of
overlap between regions, which is why you'll occasionally see multiple sets.
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Scenes

Within each path and row you'll see multiple dates listed. The combinatoin of a path and row and date are referred to as scenes.
Because Landsat 8 always captures images at the same locations, you can see how the Earth is changing over time.
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Typically, scenes with less cloud cover are more useful.

Select a date

Landsat data is annotated using the
The Worldwide Reference System (WRS).
The WRS specifies the central location of every image with a path and row.
The path references the orbital track of the satellite. The row references latitude.

Landsat 8 uses WRS-2, first created for Landsat 4. It divides the Earth into 233 paths and 248 rows.

Landsat 8 passes over the same spot on Earth at the same time, because it maintains a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit.

Fundamentally, this means there is consistent lighting every time an image is acquired for a particular location. For the whole story, see the Landsat handbook.